ed the biggest personality ever, and Ernie the El-ephant was born out of that,” says Cooper. “Weknew we needed to grow, to get people talkingabout pistachios again.”Spots aired during sports games, football season,in particular, but across other programming,including “Dancing with the Stars” and “TheLate Show with Stephen Colbert,” the latter aformer spokesperson for the irreverent brand.Digital videos and social media memes with its“Snack Smarter” messaging featuring RichardSherman, Seattle Seahawks cornerback, fueledthe campaign in the fall. The series aired onsports sites like ESPN.com, CBSsports.com,and BleacherReport.com.

Ernie was animated by Moving Pic-ture Company, and the rest of the creativewas done in-house, including the com-pany’s first large-scale digital game experi-ence and its “largest digital campaign”: “De-stroy Ernie’s Evidence” at HelpErnie.com.The site is releasing a game each week, fromMarch through June 2017, with increasing dif-ficulty and increasing prizes. Players try to helpErnie recover potentially embarrassing footagefrom a wild party with the Squirrel Sisters andcompete to win a variety of prizes from a JeepWrangler to Coachella tickets to an African sa-fari.Retail sales were up 35 percent year over year,from the time of the campaign launch in mid-October 2016 through February 2017, andthey’re still going. The health campaign had justramped up in March, and more sports fun wason tap with MLB.Not only that, but the effort helped the brandmake headway in key areas: It achieved its high-est brand awareness yet, increased market shareto 80 percent, improved its association as asnack to be had while watching football by 50percent, and added 3 million new buying house-holds vs. last year. “I’m confident we’ll keep ac-celerating the momentum,” says Cooper. MQ